The work environment was great when I start at Blackberry. Good balance between work and personal life. Great project to work and great people. Unfortunately at the and end the lay offs make the work environment very depressing.

Too much offloading of management's responsibilities onto the bottom of the chain. Mismanagement leads to collapse. Used to be a thriving, booming company, but got too caught up in it's own echo chamber to see the collapse that seemed obvious to anyone in the lower tiers.

I worked as a contractor at Blackberry's Kanata offices. I had a great 6 months there. The co-workers were top notch and the work was really technically advanced compared to my previous jobs. The environment was what you would expect from software development shops, there was a daily standup and backlog boards. My co-workers were intense but in a laid back way, if that makes sense. It was a no nonsense type of place. I can't think of any "hardest" parts of the job, as I liked going there every work day. What I liked about the job was the care Blackberry took to provide its workers with the tools and support they needed to get things done

BlackBerry was a great place to work at. The people were friendly and helpful. We had a great time there. The pay and benefits were very good. Management were easy to work for. They cared about their people.

Senior Leadership is very deceptive. They continuously tell you what you want to hear and say it is the truth, all the time setting you up for failure. Promising things they never deliver. Always getting you to change job descriptions and sign new contracts to keep your job even though you are full-time, to cut benefits, cut wages, and make it easier to layoff. Giving huge bonuses to senior leadership and raises and stock options, while freezing wages and cutting bonuses from middle management and below.

At Blackberry it was a wonderful journey working in the highly paced environment of one of the leading company in the world.The learning process was very efficient as training department was engaged in offering on job training and also development courses. The company also offered external courses.We worked as a team and achieved many milestones. The working environment was incredible and left many memorable memories of co-workers.The hardest part of the job when company downfall started and many employees lost their jobs.We most enjoyable part when we reach the highest number of customers subscribe Blackberry BBM.

Four month Co-op work term as Applications Software Development Student. Responsibilities included Fixing software bugs for BlackBerry Priv, giving updates for stand-up meetings everyday and I was also a part of Sprint planning meetings every second Monday.

I loved my office and my lab spaces. the team was very supportive of each other. the work space was very relaxing and offered basic necessities and a little more to make the work enjoyable for the employees since many of us used to put more working hours when needed. the team was close and we had many team events. the management was very supportive with everything we needed to accomplish the tasks with high quality. for a hardware system engineer we were traveling from the office to the lab many time a day. we had all the required tools in both workplaces to ease the day on us.

in this job, not only i learned different technical skills since i took different tasks in every projects, but also i gained life skills and leadership skills. the most enjoyable part of the job was the excitement of the new project and brainstorming with the co-worker. ad i guess the hardest part was as in every job meeting the deadline while trying to beat the market with new technology.

Again it was fun to work with a group of talented people close to 10 years where you almost knew most the people in your group and other groups because of job interrelated issues and spirit of team work was always there. The best part of the job was when we launched new product and had a good share of market in those days but must admit that wasn't there at the end that put lots of stress on us. Again over all I enjoyed working for Blackberry all those years and wish it never ended.

Pros

It is always fun to work for large company, there is lots of learning involved

Cons

At the end it was stressful when your product not recognized in the market like before.

Great place to work. I was on coop here so I was treated the same as an employee and got a great salary, benefits, days off, etc. Contractors on the other hand get the short end of the stick. I would love to work for BB again but not sure if I wanted to deal with being a contractor there. They do not hire a lot of actual employees so the positions are coveted if you can get them. As for job security it is a little iffy as they laid off about half their workforce while I was there including some members of my team. It is a scary thing to go through. Hopefully they will bounce back as a company because working there was a blast.

They really do look out for work/life balance at BlackBerry. They have decent vacation time and "BlackBerry days" around Christmas to cover the days that are not stats so almost everyone can take Christmas off (only a few essential personal have to work during holidays). If you want to volunteer they may even pay you your regular wage to do so (I got to volunteer at We Day for Free the Children in Waterloo and got paid as if I was working the day).

The software testing teams are great and I had a blast working for them. Trying to "break" the software and find defects before OS builds were launched was a lot of fun. Team outings were great as was the coop social committee.

Wages are very good. As a coop student I got paid the same as a regular employee and made $64k/year before overtime. Overtime opportunists are frequent in the testing department so you can make very good money there.